Entrepreneurship is an important driving factor for China's rapid economic growth in the past three decades. However, China's entrepreneurial activity has shown obvious regional differences, and administrative approval is an important institutional factor affecting entrepreneurial activity. How does the administrative examination and approval reform affect the entrepreneurial activity of Chinese cities? In order to answer this question, we put forward the corresponding theoretical hypothesis, and use the data of prefecture-level cities in China from 2000 to 2013 to test the impact of administrative examination and approval reform on entrepreneurial activity. The study found that: (1) the improvement of the intensity of regional administrative examination and approval reform has significantly improved the entrepreneurial activity of the city. (2) Compared with the central and western cities, the intensity of the reform of the administrative examination and approval of the eastern cities has a more significant impact on the entrepreneurial activity. Therefore, in order to stimulate the vitality of "mass entrepreneurship and innovation", we should further accelerate the reform of administrative examination and approval, optimize the administrative examination and approval procedures, shorten the time for administrative examination and approval, and improve the efficiency of administrative examination and approval.